What Rebuilding a 120 Year Old Schoolhouse Taught us About Life, Love, and Lumber

How to make faux-zinc house numbers, part 1

I love big zinc numbers and letters like the ones that Anthropologie has. And if Anthropologie had numbers, I probably would have broken down and bought them, but they don’t – they only have letters. I found some cool numbers online but – ouch! We have four numbers, and that adds up quick.

Story of my life: I want them – badly – but I don’t want to spend a fortune. So, I started poking around the web and found a totally cool recipe for faux zinc letters at a blog called Sugar and Charm. They used cardboard letters, which I didn’t think would hold up well outside, but it got me thinking… so here we go with how to make your own faux-zinc house numbers.

First, buy wooden numbers – there are a surprising number of sources for these online but I wanted mine really chunky. I found them at SJA Wood Design. You can choose by size AND from an amazing number of fonts. I chose Bookman Old Style in 7 inch pine for the amazing price of $3.50 each.

This is what they looked like when they arrived:

What I started with

Since they were pretty raw pine (they even smelled nice) I primed them.

My fave primer

Primed

Then I did two coats of silver paint. I really think any silver paint will work; I used cheap hardware store acrylic, which I always keep on hand.

Silver paint and bronze powder for the next step

Two coats of silver paint

And now the fun begins. Here’s what we’re going for, roughly – it’s a close up shot of the zinc counter we built, which is weathering nicely: